


lena oxton is dead

by greasyalienteenager



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Dissociation, Identity Issues, Loss of Identity, Other, POV Second Person, Timeline Shenanigans, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-07-15 22:03:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7240234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greasyalienteenager/pseuds/greasyalienteenager
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been over a year since the remains of the Slipstream were discovered, minus its pilot, presumed dead in the crash. A funeral was held, an empty coffin buried. Time passed, and you returned to your everyday life.</p><p>You don't know why people keep thinking you're her, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> crossposted to tumblr, with exactly one word different: http://pastelgrungegymbadges.tumblr.com/post/145964320662

Lena Oxton is dead.

 

You watched them sift through her ship, the blackened wreckage twisted and burning. Empty. A ship without a pilot, and no sign it had ever had one. They presumed she had survived, and waited.

It has been 200 years since the death of Lena Oxton. You watched them put her in the ground, an empty casket, a number of faces and voices. Once upon a time, you might have considered this strange, dispelled their notions. Once upon a time, you were Lena Oxton.

 

Lena Oxton is dead. It has been 200 years since her death.

 

You have been a number of people, with a number of names, living a number of lives. None of these matter, because they are not Lena's, and you didn't really live them. Time is a funny, tangible thing in the worst of ways, winding through you and around you, like a crowd on the street. Standing still in it will only get you jostled, shoved away, crushed underfoot, so you move with its pressing crush. You become a number of people no one cares about. The only person who has ever mattered is Lena, and Lena Oxton is dead.

Which makes it especially strange when they keep calling for her. Don't they know she's not here, that she's gone? Your brow creases. Grief, it must be, making them see what they want. The poor dears.

 

People keep yelling at you, and you pretend to understand the way they laugh and smile and cry. An ape promises you they'll find a way to get you back. Must be delusional, poor thing- every time they see you, they call out for Lena. And they don't always see you, even when you're two feet away screaming in their ear.

Time shoves you away, out the door, through a wall that won't be built for another three centuries. You become someone else that doesn't matter. Lena Oxton remains dead, and you're not certain she was ever alive. Months pass. Years pass. Seconds pass. You see them occasionally, an ape and a golden-haired woman and others your mind passes over. They talk and work and work and talk, but most of the time not to you, and a good amount of the time about Lena. It's been so long, so long since her funeral. It still hasn't happened yet.

 

The building around you is thin and intangible, and you pass through it without thinking on your way back to your life.

Your life.

Who's life?

Who are you?

 

The next time they speak to you, you can feel yourself being dragged back towards the room, reeled in by some unknown force. Your tether is weak and fraying, but for a moment, time ceases forcing around you and slows to an almost imperceptible crawl, dragging milliseconds on milliseconds into seconds into minutes. Winston [who is Winston? You're not certain.] stares at you openmouthed, fumbling for words. He calls for Lena again, and you frown, but the gorilla scoops you up in his arms and laughs and cries, still calling for Lena as though she can hear him in the grave.

You don't dispell his delusions, and hug back. It feels like something you've done before. You're held for a long moment before Winston jolts, setting you back down and rushing over to a contraption on a table. You can _feel_ the way time winds around it, chained like an animal struggling to get loose, hobbling you to the slow, endless drudge of the present. Everything feels distant.

He calls in a number of people to investigate the machine and you [you're starting to get uncomfortable with the sheer amount of people insisting you're a dead woman], doing tests and taking blood while the pushing, crowding flow of time pulses through you and away from you, separated by the thin and easily-shattered glass of the present.

 

You are surrounded by people, and yet you are wholly alone.

 

You're asked a lot of questions, ones that don't really make sense and that you only barely parse as words. A battery of tests and then more, worried murmuring and astonished gasps, and the constant buzz of uneasiness settling around you. Your tether feels stronger, more of a net than a string, crushing you with it's monotonous weight. The golden haired woman [Mercy, the voice in your thoughts helpfully supplies] takes you into a new room, medical and white and mostly silent without all the people talking around you about you. Mercy looks serene, bizarrely so considering the commotion just outside the door, and has you sit on an examination table.

"How are you feeling, Lena?" When you don't respond, she frowns and puts her hand on your wrist.

"Lena? You can hear me, yes?"

Surely they'd know if their doctor was delusional? Are you the only one who knows the obvious?

"I don't have a clue what you're on about, to be honest but... s' not healthy to dwell on someone this long, is it? She's dead, love, you gotta let her go." Mercy's eyes widen before she frowns, searching your face for something. Her other hand trails down her side while the one on your wrist moves to your shoulder.

"You _do_ know who Lena Oxton is, do you not?"

"I'm guessin' I do? Died in a plane crash or summat, watched 'em put her in the ground. I dunno why everyone keeps acting like she's still alive, though." You eye her warily, although your mind seems to want to find her trustworthy. She backs away to the desk across the room and shuffles through several papers, then motions for you to stand before handing you the files and a mirror.

 

The name on the file is Lena Oxton, callsign "Tracer". A picture of a young woman, auburn-haired and freckly, is clipped to the stack of sheets. In the mirror, the same face looks back at you, pale with confusion.

You toss the stack of papers to the ground and become very, very sick in the trashcan next to Mercy's desk.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr link: http://pastelgrungegymbadges.tumblr.com/post/147011869622/

 

Mercy has you sit back on the exam table once you're done heaving, placing her hands on your shoulders. Your skin crawls, and it occurs to you that another person hasn't actually put their hands on you this often in a while. Possibly ever. If your stomach wasn't empty, you'd retch again as your mind tries and fails to wrap around the concept of how long it's been since anything. The moment you were tethered to this place stretches on in your memory, ten seconds, ten minutes, fifty years, a single breath ago. You stare at your feet and try to will the room around you not to melt into incoherence.

She's talking to you, you're pretty sure, but her words aren't words, aren't getting through the twisting slog of your thoughts. The only thing you can hear is voices echoing, her voice and then others, calling for her. Calling for you.

 

Lena.

 

Lena.

 

Lena, Lena, Lena.

 

Lenalenalenalenalenalenalenalena-

 

A rough shake pulls you forcibly back into yourself, Mercy's eyes locked on yours, your mouth half open in a falling grin. Your face is wet.

"Stay with me, liebe. Please." You stare at her, watching her features twist while your sight continues to fail you, the lines on her face deepening until you see her white-haired and old, springing back into place if you look at any specific feature too hard. The pressure of hands on your body leaves you, or maybe you just stop noticing it. You're pretty sure Mercy is talking to you, but the shoving of the slipstream has your attention more, pulling at the threads of your tether. The room around you swims briefly before abruptly settling back into place.

Mercy curses and turns, rushing out the door. The remains of your tether drift idly, trampled under the rush of time.

 

In another four decades, she returns.

In two minutes, the woman returns with the ape, calling for the dead girl. You wonder why she's left a stack of papers sitting on the floor. A machine is in the ape's hand, glowing idly, trailing minutes and years in its wake. It hooks at you, but not enough to pull, a frail line to the past. Or is it the present? They both ignore you while the ape [it's a _gorilla_ , some part of you insists] squeezes in front of the desk and tinkers with it, the blonde woman talking to them [him] about Lena.

 

You don't think you've ever heard that name in your life.

 

Surely you have something to do, something you're forgetting. Why are you here in the first place? Perplexed, you walk out of the dilapidated building and set off. Why had you decided to come here of all places? No one's been here in decades, the rusted-out husk long since looted and abandoned by anyone who'd care about it.

You go a lot of places that don't make sense. You can't remember the last time you've been home, or if you even in fact have a home. What a silly person you are, sometimes.

 

You become a number of other people who are not Lena Oxton. Lena Oxton is dead, and you've never once met her in your life.

 

In another thread of time, you are still in the building. The walls spring back into pristine, clinical whiteness and the metal floor is free of rust. You haven't left since you appeared, ten minutes ago. It has been three months since the death of Lena Oxton. You still don't know who that is. You stare at your feet and try to will the room around you not to melt into incoherence.

You must've been daydreaming; you seem to do that more and more often.

 

The woman and the ape are both observing a piece of machinery on a desk too small for the both of them to be standing over. It glows and pulses, and suddenly you can feel yourself being wrenched forward. Time pulls at you, muddy and sluggish, but you're held fast by the tether around your body. Seconds pass in a linear fashion. Mercy stares at you, and so does Winston, before both of them are herding you over to the desk. You step on a bunch of papers on the way there.

 

The closer you come to the glowing machine, the heavier the net weighs over you, every individual millisecond pounding under your skin.

 

They wrestle the thing onto you with some difficulty, and your legs nearly buckle under the weight of it. Winston calls it a 'chronal accelerator', which strikes you as funny, since you don't think either you or time's ever moved slower in your life [how long has your life been? You're not sure]. He calls you 'Tracer', and while you don't recall hearing that name before it sounds passable enough to keep. Mercy tries to talk to you about the dead woman, but you insist you have no idea who she's talking about, which makes her frown.

Not a lot of what they're saying makes its way through to you, the monotonous pull of time through the accelerator weighing down on you almost as much as the machine itself. You gather that you're going to be staying here as opposed to returning to your home [for the best, since you're not actually entirely sure where you live], and under surveillance in case you disappear.

But you haven't left, have you? Have you ever been outside this building? They're the ones always ignoring you and wandering off, leaving you to your daydreams.

People can be so silly sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you everyone who commented its rly nice to see so many people like this fic haha  
> as before, updates won't be quick or frequent due to my own dissociation problems, but i'm trying to get chapters out in a reasonable amount of time.
> 
> [also in case it wasn't made clear in the fic, the first model of the chronal accelerator is bigger and clunkier]


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr link: http://pastelgrungegymbadges.tumblr.com/post/149933818262

The chronal accelerator is a wonderous piece of technology, designed by Winston to keep you tethered at all times to the proper timeline and point in time you've originated in. It is your sole lifeline, the only thing keeping you alive from an outsider's standpoint, the only way for you to interact properly with the world around you. It is the only thing between you and complete depersonalization.

The chronal accelerator is the worst thing you have ever, at any point, had on your body.

 

Its physical weight, while also inconveniently heavy, is nothing in comparison to the overwhelming stress it places on your form. Time drags at your limbs like you're swimming through mud, slow and monotonous, every milisecond passing with the speed of a glacier shifting. You can hardly stand under the press of the world around you, everything moving and shoving in too slowly to perceive properly but too fast to comprehend. Before you know it, days have passed, then weeks, then months. Your limbs are deadened, numbed, the stream of time that had once been indifferent to you now actively hostile to your existence.

 

The chronal accelerator is pronounced a great success.

Your ability to exist as a working human being is pronounced less so.

 

You're told to keep it on at all times, lest you disappear completely, whisked away by the time stream forever. The accelerator, all twenty-five overly warm pounds of it, pulses on your chest like a mockery of a heartbeat. You smile and reassure the good doctor, something you've gathered the girl you're supposed to be apparently used to do before she died. You still can't remember her name. Yours is 'Tracer', according to most of the people around you, but even that feels odd and distant.

Time passes, as it does, except this time rather than taking you as it will you're trapped in your own individual patch, drifting along with all the determination of a leaf caught in a storm. You collapse, at some point, and when you come to you're back in the building [did you really leave? You swore you had] and the blonde doctor is scolding you.

Your body requires things, such as food and sleep and cleaning, and all of these at specific intervals of time. Food requires cooking, and sleep requires you to return 'home', and cleaning requires... you don't actually remember. The steps of each thing get confused in your head every time you go to do something and time ticks along and your accelerator whines and overheats and you just want it all to _stop-_

You pause. You are laying on the bed in 'your' flat. The accelerator is heavy on your ribcage and presses your back up into an awful position.

 

You could stop.

 

The right strap comes undone with some finagling, then the left. The straps around your legs are a bit more of a challenge but soon they too come undone, and the only thing keeping the accelerator on your body is the fact that your torso is inside it. It takes a concentrated effort to shimmy out of it on your own, but soon you're standing up and the accelerator is lying, empty, on the bed. The tether is still connected to you but weaker now, a rope tied to a boulder and not the rock itself. The further away you get from it, the weaker it gets, until it's barely a thread that snaps once you're outside the door.

Time rushes up under you, drags you away, and you have never been more at ease. Miles and weeks and centuries away, in a building, a gorilla worries himself sick at the blue light that blinks out of existence on one of his monitors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is shorter than i would like it to be, but that's how these things go.  
> comments are Very Welcome and give me motivation to willingly risk dissociating so i can write this.

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't the best thing in the world lmao, but i'd appreciate feedback. i will probably continue it at some point since it ends really abruptly, but don't expect super quick updates, since trying to write dissociation leads really quickly into actual dissociation for me.


End file.
